An often compelling story of Satan’s falls, despite some hackneyed plot devices.
McElroy follows in John Milton’s footsteps in this slick, contemporary recreation of the war for heaven.
Readers have probably heard this story before: An upstart angel gets too big for his britches and attempts a heavenly coup. War ensues, but chaos is averted as hordes of superpowerful rebels are thrown into a fiery pit. That McElroy has the courage to take on this oft-told tale speaks both to his daring and to his ambition. Often, he’s up to his divine task. He writes confidently—sometimes brilliantly—and his story of arrogance, spite and betrayal has a truly epic feel (“A path had just been paved for angels to look at their own desire and decide what they were missing”). As readers shuttle between the two camps, they’ll think as often of Homer as of the Bible. However, when the author zooms in and focuses on individual characters, his touch is less deft. Unlike Milton’s Satan—whose diabolical allure is part of the thrill of his 1667 poem Paradise Lost—McElroy’s Lucifer is overweening and cardboard flat. All thoughtless pride, he makes his first appearance in the novel as quite literally a rock star, playing a heavenly guitar solo only to seethe when he’s upstaged by God; “I am the highest angel in Heaven,” he mutters. Readers next find him overseeing the construction of his own throne, asking a minion if it is “worthy of sitting next to God’s.” The Lord is also somewhat two-dimensional and has the trite habit of speaking in Bible verses. However, the author’s characterization of Lucifer’s foil, Gabriel, is subtler and thus more gripping; like the Amish craftspeople who leave a flaw in each quilt, the humble angel resists perfection. It’s a nice touch, but the novel can’t help pounding it home—sometimes quite literally: Working on a heavenly building, for example, Gabriel knocks a joist slightly askew, and walking by a pristine stream in paradise, he kicks dirt into the flow. Overall, McElroy’s retelling of the traditional Christian tale is detailed and sometimes thrilling; however, it might have been excellent if it had been a bit more original.
An often compelling story of Satan’s falls, despite some hackneyed plot devices.Pub Date: March 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1612541549
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
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